Nothing is perhaps more frustrating than not being able to find common personal items that you just had in your hand minutes ago. These items include wireless phones, keys, eyeglass cases, remote controls, toys, and similar objects. They become easily lost due to their small size, and are accidentally left behind. They can fall on the floor, become lost in chairs and seat cushions or under furniture. Other times, they may be accidentally carried from the room and left elsewhere in the home or office. Whatever the reason, the frustration level is high while trying to locate them. Many valuable minutes of one's day can be spent simply looking for lost items. Accordingly, there is a need for a means by which common household or personal objects can be tracked easily and recovered quickly when misplaced. The development of the invention herein fulfills this need.
The present invention is a personal item tracking and monitoring system which wireless telephones or similar personal objects can be easily found by the use of a radio frequency system. It is intended to be used for finding objects such as cell phones, cordless phones, eyeglasses, remote controls, toys, tools, and similar objects that are easily and often misplaced around a home or work. A small transmitter unit is attached to the object to be tracked. The user then carries a small receiver unit on his or her person. The receiver unit is of the general size of a key fob and is provided with an on/off control and a range selection control that allows permissible ranges between the object and the receiver unit on the order to ten (10) feet to hundreds of feet. The transmitter emits a radio frequency coded signal either on a continuous or periodic basis. When the receiver unit receives this signal and it is of the strength required by the range selector or higher, the personal item tracking and monitoring system is in an armed and active state. However, when the object, or receiver unit, wander farther than the range control allows, the personal item tracking and monitoring system is in an alarm state and the receiver unit emits an audible tone or beep to remind the user to retrieve the object. The present invention can also be used as an aid to retrieve the tagged item when lost. This is accomplished by setting the range on the receiver unit on progressively smaller settings until the target area is identified. The use of the present invention reduces frustration by allowing for the easy tracking and location of common personal objects.
Several attempts have been made in the past to provide lost object locating systems. U.S. Pat. No. 5,939,981, issued in the name of Renney, describes an item locator with attachable receiver and transmitter. The Renney device comprises a hand held device and multiple sensors which are attached to objects a user desires to locate. However, unlike the present invention the Renney device does not provide a receiver unit that allows a user to adjust an allowable distance between a transmitter unit and the receiver unit. Furthermore, the Renney device does not provide a receiver unit that emits a warning signal when a length between a transmitter unit and the receiver unit reaches or extends beyond a programmable allowable distance.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,573,832, issued in the name of Fugere-Ramirez, discloses a locating device for finding lost personal items, such as keys, remote controls, a pager, a cellular phone, or a pair of eyeglasses. The Fugere-Ramirez device comprises a receiver that is attached to a personal item and a remote control transmitter that a user holds. When the user wants to find the personal item a button is pressed corresponding with the item to be found. The transmitter sends out a signal to the receiver that is received and then the receiver emits a beeping sound to help the user locate the personal item. However, unlike the present invention, the Fugere-Ramirez device produces a beeping sound on the lost personal item and does not emit a beeping sound on a hand-held device with the user thereby alerting the user when they are entering an area beyond a pre-set allowable distance from the personal item, thus enabling the user to know they need to find the personal item now.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,680,105, issued in the name of Hedrick, discloses a locating device for locating objects by means of matching coded sensors and receivers. The Hedrick device includes elements for attachment that are coded to respond to corresponding individual finders. However, unlike the present invention, the Hedrick device has a large number of parts which are subject to be lost themselves, is an extremely expensive locator device because of the high costs of having individual finders with separate circuits, and the elements are large and would not be appropriate for small personal objects.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,689,238, issued in the name of Cannon, Jr. et al., discloses an object locator system for finding marked documents in a random file in a file cabinet. The files are provided with a sound emitting device which is interrogated by a coded finder or a homing device which responds to a particular coded electronic signal sending device that produces an audible sound which increases in loudness upon approaching the file to be found. However, unlike the present invention, the Cannon, Jr. et al. system is restricted to a filing system environment.
The prior art appears to disclose various lost object locating systems. However, none of the prior art particularly describes a personal item tracking and monitoring system comprising a transmitter unit attached to an object that emits a radio frequency coded signal to a receiver unit carried by a person that alerts a user by an audible or visual warning signal if said object is located farther then a distance set by a user using a range selection control located on said receiver unit that the instant invention possesses. Accordingly, there is a need for a means by which common household or personal objects can be tracked easily and recovered quickly when misplaced that operates without the disadvantages as described above.